By Jayci Cave

PCCA’s Warehouse division received a record 1,742,315 bales for the 2016-17 crop. This broke the division’s previous record of 1,610,000 bales in 2007. However, handling this crop did not come without its challenges. Jay Cowart, PCCA Vice President of Warehousing, said they had to make adjustments in order to accommodate this large crop.

More cotton coming through the PCCA Warehouse Division calls for more storage.

“For the first time since 2010, we opened the Memphis, Texas, plant,” Cowart said. “We also block stacked most of the cotton and did a lot of restacking to recover space after shipping.”

PCCA’s Altus Warehouse location is currently in the process of building a new shipping facility which should be complete late this summer. Cowart said this change is long overdue.

“The increased crop sizes in past years has overwhelmed current bale sorting, staging and shipping areas,” Cowart said. “This new facility will be able to hold all of the cotton that is ready for shipment and will increase the storage capacity in Altus by around 30,000 bales. It will be located where we can remove the outbound traffic from the rest of the plant, and it is designed for truck shipments which is going to create an orderly flow of outbound shipments in a more effective and safe atmosphere. The old facilities were designed around rail shipments and were not very effective.”

Cowart said this change is coming at a good time because of the increase in planted acres in 2017-18.

“Based on planting intentions we may see a little larger crop in the Rolling Plains and a larger crop in Oklahoma and Kansas,” Cowart said. “If this crop gets planted and has average or better yields, the Warehouse Division could have another full and challenging year ahead.”